


Beyond

by Yossk



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bruce Needs a Hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 17:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18674032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yossk/pseuds/Yossk
Summary: The snap isn’t what it looks like: over in an instant. It lingers, fingertips rubbing together, each ridge and valley, one after another. It takes its toll.*Major EndGame spoilers. Stop right here if you haven't seen it yet.*





	Beyond

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> _For Natasha. The strongest Avenger._  
> 

 

 

Her voice follows him, at the other end of a crowded too-small subway carriage, a dry laugh and a whisper against his ear. A flash of red around the corner. Just out of sight.

...

He remembers.

...

_“I had this dream. The kind that seems normal at the time, but when you wake…”_

_“What did you dream?”_

_“That I was an Avenger. That I was anything more than the assassin they made me.”_

Oh, Nat, you are so much more than that.

_..._

That’s not what he said.

...

The snap isn’t what it looks like: over in an instant. It lingers, fingertips rubbing together, each ridge and valley, one after another. It takes its toll.

...

His eyes snap open. Somehow, they never closed. Where he was there, he is now here. Water, maybe, wading in it. Skin temperature and somehow not wet. Thick viscous air, reflections of nothing rippling on the surface. It has the feeling of a dream, of time passing in fits and starts and nothing solid. Nothing existing unless he’s looking at it.

“Hey stranger.”

She’s behind him, watching from the other side of an empty crowded room.

“Nat.”

He’s small again, his body compressed to fit a too-large suit. Her hair is short, curled and she smells like dust and heat and noise. She’s in long skirts and a blouse with a quiet smile playing around her lips. But her eyes are ten years older and there’s a laugh behind them like she knows what he’s seeing and she’s seeing the same. They’d never have imagined it then, but: how young they both were.

“How are you here?” His voice is hoarse. He’s not sure if he’s really speaking.

She shrugs, “I’m dead. How should I know?”

“I can bring you back. I have the stones.” He feels the desperation, creeping into his voice, “I can bring you back.”

Her forehead creases, voice hard and wary. “Don’t.”

In the other world, there’s fire burning up his arm. He gestures expansively. “Why not?”

“You know why.”

He does. Somehow he knows, though he rails against it.

She closes her eyes briefly, “You won’t bring me back to a world where we still lost. I can’t- _Don’t_.” She whispers the last. He can’t stand it.

“I can do both.”

“No, you can’t”

She knows too.

There’s something different about her. The others are right _there_ , waiting at the tips of his fingers for existence to join them again. Natasha is… He can feel every cell of her. Every broken bone. Blood and brains and guts and- He closes his eyes, concentrates. She feels sluggish. More than that. Like he’d have to take each cell, drag it out and force it back into its place. And even then, Natasha wouldn’t be there. The soul stone burns through him. It will shatter. Before or after he forces her soul back into her body, he doesn’t know.

“I’d rather have you.”

She laughs. She’s won, like they knew she would, “No, you wouldn’t.”

He sits for a while, on an indeterminate something conjured from the ether. His body is in the lab, fingers clenching and arm burning. He can hold on, for a little while. In this strange, weightless reality. He plays with the fraying cuff of his old suit, watching her as she watches him. She’s turning something over in her mind. Her face is ten years older than her body, all that mysterious poise and carefully structured blankness stripped away. For now, anyway.

“I loved you.” Past tense. She smiles, “I loved all of you.”

Bruce’s hand twitches. He wants to reach out, to hold her, but he’s so afraid that she’s not really there. That she’ll crumble to dust in his hands, and he’ll have lost this one last chance. But if there’s a time for _speaking_ bravely, it must be now.

“I love you too. We all do.”

She smiles to herself, looking down and laughing quietly.

“What?”

“Present tense.”

“Of course.”

“This isn’t a fairy-tale, Bruce. I’m dead.”

“Nat.” He takes her hand. It’s solid and warm. “Doesn’t change anything.”

He holds her gaze. She believes him now. Even if she’s not really here, even if she’s just a figment of his imagination, it’s worth it.

“You’re running out of time.”

“I know.” The gauntlet burns up his arm, bones shattering and splintering. A stuttering in his enlarged heart as it fights to tether him to life. He’s never felt pain, not in this body. Not physically. It’s interesting.

“What would you have done?”

“What do you mean?”

He swallows. It’s suddenly very important that he asks, “With the rest of your life.”

She shrugs, “Same old, same old. Tried to make amends.”

“You did that a long time ago.”

Her hair falls into her eyes as she shakes her head, “I didn’t.” She looks up at him, “But thank you.”

She’s quiet. It’s a strange and hard-earned privilege to watch the thoughts play over her face. She exhales.

“I might have liked somewhere quiet, eventually.” Her face creases. “With company.”

He hears the echo of her footsteps, her fevered gunshots filling the corridors of the deserted Avengers’ compound.

“We should have stayed.”

She shakes her head, smiling at him again and he wonders how a woman can have so many smiles, and so few of them be happy.

“You moved on. That was right.”

His insides clench.

“Don’t look like that. I never expected to retire. I never expected… any of it.” She’s happy now, although he’s fairly sure she’s crying.

A shiver runs through him. They both feel it.

“You have to go.”

He stays where he is, lacing her fingers between his own.

“Bruce.” Her voice is sharp, commanding. “Let me go. I didn’t throw myself off that cliff so you could give up now. It fucking hurt.”

He pulls her towards him. She’s tiny in his arms, even in his current shrunken state. She’s always been taller in his head, larger than life and impossible to hold onto.

And then he’s gone. Or, rather, he’s back in the lab, his arm on fire and his finger sliding past his thumb and a billion bursting sparks of life in his heart, so loud and so joyful that he almost can’t feel the one that’s missing.

Almost.

...

New York is hard, in the aftermath. Chaotic and joyful and mourning. So many people stayed dead, but so many lived and it’s impossible to reconcile the two, to balance their weights’ against each other.

Five years is a long time for the world to spin without you. Home isn’t there for everyone.

...

There’s one thing he hates. (Well, not one thing, there’s lots of things, but this one grinds in the marrow of his newly formed bones). He’s been forgiven. All that pain, and chaos and death and he’s a hero now, with children taking his photograph and their parents stopping to talk to him in the street. He’s a _character._ He has _celebrity._

But that’s not quite it, that’s not the problem. It’s in how they remember _her._ She’s forgotten, in their minds, in the names of the heroes, and it burns white hot rage through his soul because she was this most heroic of them all.

 _Russian assassin. Past shrouded in shadow. Double-agent._ Those are the whispers that follow her name. That’s all they remember. That’s all they ever knew.

They never knew what they were missing.

...

New Asgard calls to him. He runs tirelessly across land but the Atlantic defeats him and he’s too large for a plane. It’s a long voyage on a cargo ship, camped out on the deck with the wind lashing his face before they dock in Liverpool and soft earth crumbles beneath his feet.

He travels fast, leaping over hill and lake and sea, washing up on the shore like so much flotsam tangled in the self-attending fishing nets strung across the bay.

“Hi, stranger.”

Val, this time. Why is he a stranger all the time?

“I heard there was a whale beaching itself. Thought it might be you.”

He shrugs off the water, brushing salt out of his eyes.

She smirks at him. “There’s a barn just out of town. Big doorway, high ceilings. Might suit you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re looking pretty blue for a guy that saved the world.”

She’s grinning, wind whipping hair about her face, forcing it from its braid. He shakes himself. There’s loss here too. No need to dwell on it.

“Which way?”

She points up the road. “Drink later?”

“Sure. Just let me unpack my bags.”

They both laugh. It’s light, full of wind and salt and the echoes of old friends.

...

He dreams of Tony, sometimes, wired and excited and talking ( _so much talking_ ). The world is quieter now.

He asks him, one night: “Why don’t you haunt me like she does?”

Tony pauses, an apple halfway to his mouth, another hand on the keyboard, tapping and tapping at unknowable things. “’Cause I’ve got too many other people to haunt. Can’t spend all my time on you, bro.”

He grins and he’s gone and Bruce awakes far later, feeling the weight of responsibility sitting tight within his chest.

...

It’s soothing here. People know him, but he’s one oddity among many and far from infamous in comparison. He speaks to Clint one night. They were never much good at being friends, separated by too many miles and too many years since they’d been brief occasional co-habitants of the tower. But now there are so few people who truly knew her, and it’s not enough but it’s something.

“Her father’s name was Ivan.”

Clint mumbles, and it crackles through the handset from a blanket of darkness in Iowa to the bright, bright Scandinavian sunlight. Bruce doesn’t understand.

“That’s what the red guy said.” His voice cracks, “Natasha, daughter of Ivan.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because she didn’t know.”

That sits inside him like a weight for days after.

...

She’s in his dreams and he hates that. The dream-version isn’t her, and she doesn’t deserve the two-dimensional mirage his mind manages to create.

He tries to remember, instead.

...

There’s a loud yell and a thump and a weight around his shoulders. And then someone’s swinging off him, landing in his path in a blur of white and brown.

“You owe me a drink.”

“That wasn’t very kingly of you.”

“You still owe me a drink.”

He rubs a hand through his hair and she’s gone and he can’t help but follow.

...

Metal clinks on wood, a pitcher slid across a bar, condensation beading along its surface. He takes a sip.

“Who were they?”

Val is gripping her own pitcher, half empty already. She’s a strange kind of king but it suits her.

“That’s an odd question, given the circumstances.”

Her head tilts, a challenge in her gaze, “There’s someone though. Someone haunts you more.”

He turns towards the pitcher. He doesn’t want to bring her here, to this bar of survivors, already so full of ghosts.

“You can’t hide it, big guy. I should know.”

His mouth and his shoulders move in acknowledgement but his brain doesn’t formulate a response. He downs the pitcher and stands. His head spins. He’d forgotten the potency of Asgardian ale.

He pushes outside and toes the door closed and Val’s somehow right behind him, smugly self-satisfied.

“Are you gonna follow me all night?”

“All night, all day. You can’t outrun me, big guy.” She grins at him. Her mask is different to Nat’s, but it’s a mask all the same.

“I should have stayed away.”

She lifts a shoulder in a _what can you do_ kind of way, leaping on top of a picnic table so that their faces are on a level. He feels a phantom ache up his arm, newly healed and still slightly stiff. _Oh, what the hell._ He sits heavily on the grass, damp seeping into the seat of his pants and she settles cross-legged on her perch, arms resting languidly on her knees and her gaze level and piercing.

He struggles. Where to start?

“No-one knows what she did. Who she is.” He pauses. He doesn’t want to say it. “ _Was._ ”

Val watches him. The stars are bright here, on a clear night like tonight, and they remind him where he is, that the earth still spins beneath his feet.

“You do.”

“I know. It’s just—She had a family, once. And they should know too.”

“Do you want to find them?” Val’s practical. _Doing_ is how she copes. Now that she’s not drowning herself in alcohol and violence. Swimming, perhaps, but not drowning. She rests her chin in her hands.

“Yes—I think… Yes.”

“I’m gonna need something more to go on. Natasha, right?”

“You’re wha—“ He stops.

She raises a sharp eyebrow at him. “You didn’t think I was going to plug you for information and then leave you to wallow, did you?”

His face contorts into half a sheepish grin, “Sorta.”

“Information. Gimme.”

He hesitates. “Natasha Romanoff. _Natalia Alianovna Romanova_.” The syllables roll painfully, musically over his tongue, “But… that might not have been the name she was born with. I don’t know. Her father’s name was Ivan.” He doesn’t tell her how he knows this, how he feels about that information being imparted to her and then plucked away before she could use it.

Val stands, regal again on the picnic table, “I’m not promising anything.”

She leaves him there, watching the stars reflected on the water, waiting to hear her voice. The dream is stronger now.

...

Not all the Asgardians have settled on New Asgard. Bruce is surprised and more than a little concerned to find out just how far their influence already spreads. He files that away for later. He’s not a politician. It’s not his problem.

And he can’t deny their efficiency. It takes a month. He helps with the fishing, reeling in nets, water and salt and seaweed in his eyes. His strength and endurance is normal here, if his size and colour are a little off.

Val passes him an envelope with his beer. They’re a strange people: old-fashioned and futuristic all at once. Their science borders on magic, but they’re in no rush to get rid of the old technologies. Parchment has served them well long enough.

Bruce handles it carefully, folding it into the pocket of his pants and downing the tankard in three large gulps.

“Good luck.”

Her eyes are soft. Later, he wonders what she already knew.

...

He travels to Novgorod, and then to a village just outside. Twenty or thirty houses and a scattering of shops on the side of the road. A church and a school. It’s quiet, snow on the ground and he wonders how so many months have passed, how the seasons are still moving on.

The silence presses in on him, snow deadening his footsteps. Has he made a mistake in coming here? Do they know him? Will his knock on this woman’s door give her a heart attack?

He knocks anyway. He’s come this far.

A middle-aged woman answers. Her hair is gathered loosely away from her face and her eyes barely widen at the sight of him. Her air is of resignation, more than fear.

“I suppose you must come in.”

She speaks English with a mild accent, far more fluently than he would have expected, out here on the edge of nothing.

He squeezes through the doorway, ducking into her steamy kitchen. She closes the door to the rest of the house, banging the door knob until it clicks tight shut. He’s sure she’d rather have made him wait on the doorstep, but didn’t want the neighbours gawking. Something is off here, something is unsettling his gut.

“You can sit on the floor.”

He hesitates and then does so. He’s too tall for this room and too heavy for her chairs. He wants to be on her level.

He starts, the only way he can, “You know who I am?”

She shrugs, “Of course.” And then laughs at his expression, “We have wi-fi here. All that stuff.”

Bruce is wrong-footed. He expected to have to explain, to argue his way in, and now he’s sat here on the floor of this woman’s kitchen and she’s watching him appraisingly and Nat is staring back at him through her eyes.

“I know why you’re here.”

“You do?”

“It is her, is it not? Natalia? They told me she was dead.” Her expression is carefully blank, her voice bitter, and he’d assume that she didn’t care if he hadn’t learnt to read this very mask so long ago.

“You know who she was?”

“More than you, perhaps.”

Bruce closes his eyes. He has to say it, cling to his script even in the face of the blank confusion scrambling his brain, “She was your niece.”

The woman’s face hardens, “No. She was no such thing.”

“But—“

“They took my brother’s daughter and grew a monster inside of her. Natalia died thirty five years ago.”

“I—That’s not who she was.” He’s started now, and he can’t stop, even as the woman’s face hardens, fists clenched white on the tabletop, “She broke away from them. She fought so hard to make amends. She was the best of all of us.”

Her sneer is Nat’s, “Then I pity you.” She stands before him, tense but unafraid, “Do you know what she did? What they sent her here to do?”

He freezes. He should have known. There was a reason Nat had never been down this path before. Or never told him. The woman in front of him, Marina, her eyes flash, grief so quickly hidden. “My Lena...” She chokes on it, silence settling over the room as horror and understanding floods his gut. “I told you I knew more than you.”

He can’t face this, can’t face this woman’s grief, the loss of her family one by one over so many years. Not when his own grief is so near and so raw.  How can he offer her the Nat he knows, now, when she’s already gone? How can he explain to her who she became? It’s not fair on either of them, to face this.

“I shouldn’t have come.”

“No, you should not.”

He stands to leave, stooping, shoulders brushing against the rough ceiling.

She’s fighting something, darting behind her eyes.

“Wait there.”

She disappears, closing the door tightly behind her. He waits, crouched awkwardly as his back stiffens and his neck aches. There’s rummaging above him, a heavy item of furniture scraping across the floorboards. Years ago, he would have been afraid. Expecting betrayal, the clatter of helicopters and heavy footsteps in the snow.

He doesn’t care so much now. He has both strength and control. He has the privilege to wait it out, to see what strange events life brings.

She appears in front of him again, holding a box gingerly between her fingers, “I kept it for Ivan. I don’t want it.”

He nods and takes it from her, wrapped in string and dog-eared in the corners. There are no more words and so he leaves the way he came, backing carefully through her heavy front door.

Outside in the snow, away from the houses, he carefully pushes the string aside, unwraps the brown paper and lifts the lid.

A photograph falls out and he holds it between his fingers, drinking it in. There’s a child’s drawing underneath, and more photographs and more drawings and a bundle of letters wrapped tight at the bottom.

His Russian is bad, but he can make out the characters of her name: _Natalia._

He folds them quickly, parcelling them away. They’re not meant for his eyes.

With the box tucked tightly under his arm he strides onwards, the harsh wind blowing away his tears before they can dry in salt-tracks on his skin.

...

New Asgard is cold, getting colder. He notices it more now, wind and snow through the gaps in the barn door. He shelters her box in a corner, wrapped up tight against the elements. It’ll be safe there, should she come looking.

...

The water laps at him, a barely familiar dry warmth. He opens his eyes.

She’s sat not far away, cross-legged, her reflection wavering in the strange surface below. It’s not a dream. It might not be real, but it’s not a dream.

“Nat.”

She looks up. Her hair is long and blonde-tipped red again, and she’s clad in a sweater and jeans he’s not sure he’s seen before. She smirks at him.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

He crosses to join her. His body is small and he wonders why. Whether he’s clinging on to a past he’s not fully sure he wants to re-live, or if he just finds it easier to match her for size.

“This is…weird.”

She grins, “Life’s always been weird. Why should death be any different?”

There’s a warmth coming off her, a life to her skin and her smile. She still lives here. In what can only be his mind.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Doctor Banner.”

Her fingers are fluttering nervously and he’s forgotten that she’s been absent for so many months. It seems impossible that so much time should have passed that she hasn’t lived. She doesn’t know how it ended.

“We won. We brought them back. Thanos is gone.”

Her shoulders relax, but she’s heard the edge in his voice, “And…?”

“Tony didn’t make it.”

Her lips fold together and her eyes close briefly. She breathes a few times, quietly, and he waits for them to open again. She smiles wryly, “I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

“Steve returned the stones. And then took the long way home.”

Her face creases in confusion. She’s missed so much.

“1970. There was a…. thing. They got the Space Stone from 1970.”

Her eyes widen, “Bastard.”

Bruce can’t help but laugh. No-one else has said it. She contemplates.

“Was he happy?”

“I think so.”

He reaches an arm out, pulls her in to him. She settles into his side and he can’t understand how she can possibly be gone. Her hair has ended up in his mouth. Why would he dream that? He spits at it, not wanting to push her away. She bats at him, sighs and sits up.

“What now?”

“I don’t know.”

But he does. It’s suddenly so obvious why he’s here.

He hesitates, “I have something for you.” He casts around. How can he—? But suddenly it’s there. It’s always been there. The box wrapped in string bumping up against his left leg.

“Funny time for gift giving.”

She’s wary as she takes the box from him. Should he warn her? He doesn’t know where to start. She unties the string gingerly.

“It’s not a bomb.”

That gets him a smirk, “You can never be too careful.”

She freezes when she takes the lid off, seeing the photographs inside. Her face passes into shadow and this was a terrible, horrible idea. He should have left well alone.

She holds one of the photographs gingerly between her fingertips, staring at it like it’s going to leap out and attack her. Its subjects are formal and a little stiff. A man and a woman with a red-headed child clinging onto her hip.

“What is this?”

Bruce can’t look at her, “You.”

“I don’t—“

“Nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty seven.”

He feels her shift next to him, get up and walk away. She’s silent, so silent. After a moment he turns to look after her, expecting her back, rigid with lines of anger. Instead her shoulders are hunched and shaking. He follows, leaving the box abandoned on the ground.

“Nat.”

She shakes herself, face wet with silent tears, pulling herself back to composure.

He reaches for her, “Don’t do that.”

She steps away. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t hide.”

“I’m fine.” She takes a deep breath, “You could have warned me.”

“Sorry.” He’s not sorry at all. He is sorry for not letting her cry.

“Ok.” She’s speaking to herself, mumbling under her breath, “Ok.”

They walk back. He doesn’t watch as she unpacks the rest, he sits with his back to hers and lets her have her privacy. A strained choking sound escapes her as he hears the letters crack and unroll, and it’s all he can do not to turn around. But she’ll try to hold it back again, to hide from him, and that’s not fair on her.

Eventually: “Bruce.”

He turns. The caption on the back of the photograph she’s holding reads _Natalia and Elena, 1987_. His heart sinks.

“Where did you get these?”

He’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask. Everything good gets tainted somehow. The Red Room were masters at that.

“Marina.”

She doesn’t react.

“Your father’s sister.”

Natasha shoves a fist into her mouth and bites down hard. He expects her to crumple. He doesn’t know why. She never has before. Three breaths and she’s back again, ramrod straight, eyes dry and red-rimmed.

“I thought I recognised her. Did she—“

“She… implied.”

“I—“

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Her lips press into a thin line, “I need to.”

“Ok.” He’ll carry this with her, if she wants him to.

“I—“ She turns to him, fixes him with her gaze, daring him to look away. She’s always braver than he can ever imagine. “I was thirteen. She’d been making trouble. Looking for me, or… I don’t know. They sent me to her house and—“ She gives him a sort of smile. He’s never sure why she does that. To soften the blow, perhaps. “I slit her daughter’s throat whilst she watched.”

She pushes the box away. Her hands are steady. She’s looking down now, away from him.

“It was perfect. She drowned in her own blood. They told me she was my cousin, after.”

He doesn’t know what to do. She sits, watching her reflection in the strangely moving ground. He wonders what she sees.

“Nat, I—“

“Not your fault.”

“Not yours, either.”

Her smile is small and fleeting, but it seems to crack her out of wherever she’s gone. “Later. I’ll— Later.” She pushes the pile of papers away, out of sight. What does later mean, in a place like this? It doesn’t matter.

She sits, and he waits and time passes slowly or not at all. Eventually, she shifts over, lying back with her head in his lap. He freezes in surprise and she smirks up at him.

“You know people say _life’s_ too short? Well.”

He takes her proffered hands, tangling both their sets of fingers in her hair. Her grip is hard, and only now can he feel the hidden tremor in her fingertips. He looks up, following her gaze. There are stars here too. Weirdly familiar, but not quite fixed. He thinks he sees Orion’s Belt, but then it shifts, morphs into something else somehow without moving.

“She won’t forgive me.” Her face is salt-stained and slightly red.

“No.”

“I wouldn’t forgive me either.” She squeezes his hands, “How long do you have?”

“I don’t know.” He truly doesn’t, this time. His body is waiting safely in the barn in New Asgard, sleeping semi-peacefully.

She shifts in his lap. “Tell me about it.” She doesn’t need to be more specific.

“They’re re-building. Wanda’s taken charge.”

She smiles, “She’ll be good.”

“She did learn from the best.”

Natasha tries to swat at him half-heartedly with their joined hands, but only succeeds at pulling her own hair.

“Take a compliment, woman.”

She sighs tightly. Her voice is thin. “Who else?”

“Sam. Steve gave him his shield.” She nods. “Scott, Hope, Bucky, Rhodes. Peter bounces around sometimes. Pepper’s still financing and Wakanda… does its own thing. Clint’s retired, but it won’t be long before Lila’s competing for a place.”

“Oh crap.”

“That’s what Clint said. He keeps hiding her bow.”

He makes it sound light, easy. She doesn’t need to know about the political backstabbing, about the mourning and the chaos as governments deal with the sudden reappearance of half their populations, five years on. About the weight they all carry with them. She knows that too well.

“I’d have liked to have seen it.” He squeezes her hands silently, “But _I don’t every time get what I want._ ”

“Wasn’t that my line?”

He forgets, often, how photographic her memory is, where it hasn’t been messed with. He’s envious in the good times, and horrified in the bad. Her impression of him is almost perfect.

She shrugs, “True, though. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted everyone else to live.”

There’s nothing to say. He kisses the tips of her fingers. She smiles softly at him, “In another reality, maybe.”

“We are in another reality.”

“True.”

It doesn’t feel right though, to start something here, now. He can’t leave her with anything else unfinished. Although, he doesn’t want to leave her at all. She’s alone here. He never wants to leave her alone again.

Her face softens, relaxed. Her eyes dart to her right, where the box and scattered papers are somehow visible again. “Thank you.”

“You should have had more.”

“Then I wouldn’t be who I am.”

She lifts their hands and spins gracefully, finishing cross-legged opposite him, their arms crossed loosely in front of her. He can feel the calluses, the faint scar across her palm. His hands are soft by comparison.

“There’s been a hole there, for so long…I do want to know who I was.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

She’s so still, in this world. She’s always been graceful, fluid, but this is more. It’s inaction. There’s nothing left for her to do. He thinks she’ll go mad. He hopes this is just a dream.

He watches her and she watches him and he wonders what would happen if he stayed here, kept her company in this strange blank shimmering world. It wouldn’t be so bad. She squeezes his hands and shakes her head. She always knows what he’s thinking.

They keep sitting though, time passing or not passing or whatever it does here. Bruce feels his body back in the barn roll over and start snoring. He wonders what happens when morning comes.

A noise breaks the silence. A splashing and a clipping of shoes.

Natasha looks up, over his shoulder, flicking hair out of her eyes. “Oh, _Jesus._ ” But her smile betrays her.

Bruce turns around. He’s definitely dreaming.

“Romanoff!” Tony’s not still, Tony is one hundred percent the opposite of still as he _walktwitchruns_ across the not-water towards them, “I’ve been looking all over for you.” He stares straight past Bruce.

“Thought you’d finally join the party, Stark?” She squeezes his hands as she stands, letting go, pulling Tony into a hug. His arms wrap around her, clinging on as if for dear life. There’s something more solid about the two of them than there is about Bruce. They both belong here, now.

“What’s all that?” He gestures at the papers and photographs, scattered on the floor.

“A gift.”

“For me?”

She smirks, “No.”

“Aw, no fair.”

She crouches, gathering it carefully, reverently together, sealing the box and tying the string. Tony doesn’t ask where it came from. On this plane of reality, questions like that generally don’t have answers.

“Come on, places to go, people to see.” Tony is incorrigible, even in death.

She’s hesitant. He raises a questioning eyebrow. “There are people I don’t want to see.”

His shoulders sag a little, “Me too.” He holds out a hand, nonetheless.

Bruce watches them hungrily. He’s not going to come here again. She’s not alone any more. She blows him a teasing kiss as she leaves. He laughs, and blows her one back.

She takes Tony’s hand.

He can hear them, as they walk away.

“I found this place where I can see Morgan. She’s awesome. Have I ever told you how awesome she is?”

“You might have mentioned it, once or twice.”

“She got her hands on Pepper’s suit…

Their voices fade.

...

Bruce wakes suddenly, sunlight streaming in through the gaps in the wood. He looks around, absorbing his surroundings: the makeshift stove in the corner, blackening the ceiling; the scattered heaps of acquired belongings; the dampness seeping down one wall and the sharp smell of rotten wood.

_Jesus, I’ve let myself go._

He picks himself up, scrambling around for semi-clean clothes, throwing open the doors to let the sunlight in, to let fresh cold air stream through.

He looks carefully, in the dark corner by the wall.

Natasha’s box is gone.

 

 


End file.
